Can't Be Caught Red Handed
by SeraDomiCher
Summary: A sunken trading ship, a nearly-dead trader, and a plot that spans nations with the potential to destroy them all, spiral onto Fonsett Island. As the cold war between Mor Ardain and Uraya threatens to turn hot, it's up to a man who should be in his grave to figure out the truth before it's all blown to Elysium.


While the man's life was rarely a model of stability, what with him being a salvager and a novice trader subject to the ebbs and flows of the literal and economic tide, it never occurred to him that he'd one day have the physical ground he stood on begin to give way.

It started as a grinding below the decks of his ship. That alone was a common enough occurrence, with the schools of aquatic fauna moving away from advancing Continental Titans and predators chasing after them. He had learned to ignore it after a while. This grinding had dragged on for a suspiciously long time, nearly a minute. It merely registered as an annoyance to him, one he would have to buff out next time he was in Mor Ardain or Uraya, but what he glimpsed over the side of his ship gave him a reason to worry.

From what he could tell as he ran up to the bow of his ship, a massive turtle-like Titan had come up right under his ship, with an unmarked metal dome attached to its back. It moved relatively fast for its size, and as it was close to passing the ship, the man could see that the dome had a sort of fin attached to the back of it.

The grinding came to a sudden stop as the ship lurched forward. The man caught himself on the railing and tried to stabilize himself, but fell flat on his behind as the ship rocked back. He scrambled to his feet and kept a vice grip on the outer railing to keep himself up as he moved out of the bow and onto the deck, maneuvering past the sliding crates and items that weren't roped down. As much as he tried to keep himself from panicking, he couldn't help but notice that the water level seemed to be approaching the deck.

After what felt like an hour, he approached the aft of the ship and the stairs down to the storage deck. It only took a quick glance down to confirm his fears: he was taking on water, and fast, as it was already halfway up the stairs. He doubled back and rushed back to the navigation room, frantically pawing around on the console until he found the radio. After pushing a few buttons, he put the talk-piece up to his mouth.

"This is Marc Karya, member of the Argentum Trade Guild. I think I have been attacked by an unmarked underwater vessel resembling a large turtle with a dome on its back, and my ship is taking water. In case my transponder isn't working, I'm about five-thousand titan-peds south-southwest of Fonsett Island in the Leftherian Archipelago. I'll most likely be off the ship by the time anyone gets this message, so I'm setting this message on repeat as a warning. If you feel up to it, you can try to get my stuff, but keep an eye out for...whatever the hell that thing was."

He put the talk-piece down and grabbed one last thing on the console before moving out of the room and leaning against the railing. The rocking of the boat had stopped, allowing him to get a clear view of where he needed to swim to. He put the life-jacket over himself, pulling the cord to inflate it. The pressure it exerted on his chest and torso was somewhat comforting, which was a feeling he desperately needed in this moment.

Steadying himself and his mind, he took one last breath as he leapt over the railing and into the Cloud Sea.

* * *

Mark woke up with a start, his body jolting to attention like a hypnic jerk. A sharp piercing feeling in his side brought him to full awareness as he let out a yelp of pain and leaned his head back against his pillow. Squeezing his eyelids shut, he let the wave of pain wash over him as he had let the sea wash over him after he jumped ship.

A creaking sound to his left caught his attention and forced him to open his eyes as much as he could bear. He saw that he was in an unfamiliar room constructed of a dark wood, hopefully on land, though he couldn't say for sure if his rocking movements weren't from his body spasming in pain. The door, which was only slightly opened with the noise, swung open, and an older, dark-skinned woman walked in.

She rushed over to his bedside and knelt down, eyes wide with what seemed to him like fear. "Ok, honey, I need you to try and stay still," she said with a pleading edge, "can you do that for me?"

Mark managed a weak nod of assent through the contortions of pain. He tried to will his body to be limp, to stop trying to move. It worked, much to his surprise; his body relaxed and slowly set itself flat on the bed. Breathing still hurt, but his salvager training had taught him how to make up for it.

He fully opened his eyes and shifted gaze to his environment. "Where … am I?," he strained.

"You're on Fonsett Island, in Leftheria," the woman replied, in as calming of a voice as she could manage in such a stressful situation. "We found you drifting up to our port unconscious about an hour ago. The doctors there bandaged you up the best they could, then they brought you to my house."

Mark scrunched his eyebrows slightly. "Bandag-" He looked down at himself, and saw the bandages wrapped around his torso, with blood seemingly radiating from his left rib. "Oh Artichect, what happened?!," he gasped out as his breath ran out of his control, panic and pain settling into a growing grimace on his face.

The woman put a firm hand on his shoulder and leaned over him. "Keep breathing, honey, keep breathing, just nice and slow, keep breathing."

He had already lost all sense to the pain. The only thing he was aware of was the stabbing feeling in his side and the adrenaline-fuelled panic overtaking his thoughts. He thought he could hear someone yell something, somewhere close- Coral, or Corin? The woman responding, rapid footsteps and tense words between the two voices. Four hands holding him down, though he couldn't comprehend what monster would do that in this biome.

A warm, wet feeling slammed against his left ribs, forcing its way into his body, taking a direct path to where he imagined his heart was. All around it his muscles relaxed, working to loosen the pain's vice-grip on his awareness. He opened his eyes as much as he could, which wasn't much yet but was getting better, and saw a new- no, two new people in the room with him and the woman: An older man with a wide scaley face and pointed ears, holding his hands out over him, seemingly projecting ether into his side, and a machine-like humanoid Blade holding down his right arm and leg.

The woman- Corrine, if Mark remembered correctly- put her hand under his head. "Still with us, honey?"

"Yeah, I… I think so," Mark sighed out. He looked over to the new man and the Blade. "Who… are you?"

The man spoke up first. "I'm Doctor Tanta, with the Urayan Expedition Fleet," he said, putting his hand to his chest. "This," he gestured to the Blade, "is my assistant, Wrin. You can take your hands off him now." The Blade released his grip on Mark's right limbs and rested his arms at his side. "Now," he continued, "I know you must have a lot of questions regarding your current condition. We do too, but given your reaction to your immediate injuries, it would be better to save those for another time." He pulled something out of his side-bag, a small vial filled with a translucent blue liquid. "For now, you need to rest. This is a rather strong sedative, which, when drunk, will put you under for about a day. This will give your body time to heal undisturbed. Do you understand?"

Mark nodded, mentally debating whether or not he needed a sedative to sleep for that long, as he was already struggling to keep his eyes open.

Tanta put on a little smile. "Very good. Corrine, if you could lift his head up…" He felt her hands push his head up and forward, closer to the doctors hand. The doctor uncapped the vial and poured into Mark's slack mouth. He thought it tasted somewhat sweet, but he didn't have time to think more on it as he was dragged into a dark sleep.

* * *

"Report, Captain."

"We have located the wreck, ma'am, and the extraction crew is working its way through the cargo as we speak."

"Any sign of Erden?"

"No, ma'am. The crews have detected faint traces of ether, but it's faint enough to be from any Blade or ether-reactive material that's entered the vessel in the last year."

"Keep searching. How about our pee-oh-eye?"

"From what intelligence we can gather, he survived and is being treated by an Urayan doctor on Fonsett Island."

"An Urayan? Where'd he come from?"

"The Expedition Fleet, ma'am. They've stopped in Leftheria for... shore leave, I think was the term they used."

"Titan's foot, if they think we're that gullible they've got another thing coming. Have they made any moves around the wreckage?"

"If I may infer, ma'am, sending that doctor for the pee-oh-eye was them making a move. He might have more info than we can gather from the wreckage."

"We can't send someone up ourselves, lest we give ourselves away... Architect damn-it. Set a surveillance team on him, if a single Urayan so much as sets foot on the same island as him, contact me.

"Yes Spe-... ma'am. Are those the orders?"

"Yes, Captain. Those are the orders."

"Got it. Captain Em-One, over-and-out."

The click of a comm-line being cut. The sigh of a frustrated woman.

"Come, Kaiser. We've got work to do."


End file.
